To Exist
by wintergreen825
Summary: No one ever seemed to see him. Harry just wanted to feel like he existed.


**Legal Disclaimer:** I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.

**Warning:** This work may be offensive to some readers. Content also includes child abuse, child abandonment, and a recurring theme of self-harm. These things are severe enough to warrant the M rating, as writing it was enough to trigger me. Feel free to back out if that's too much for you. I seriously will not blame you.

**Author's Note:** So, um, I cheated when I chose my disorder for this prompt. I ended up choosing one that I have. If I don't have one of my tactile toys, my fingers start rubbing against each other before escalating to picking at my fingernails. If I'm sitting (especially cross-legged), I start on my ankles, just like Harry does in the first scene. This is after _years_ of cognitive behavioral therapy and medication to treat the underlying OCD. This is not simply a bad habit, regardless of how it seems on the surface. Finding a safe replacement for the behavior is the only _direct_ treatment.

**Disorder Information:** I chose Dermatillomania (Excoriation Disorder), which are the official terms for picking/scratching at your skin. It is usually comorbid with another disorder, typically an anxiety or sensory one, though it can be found in trauma survivors without any other diagnosed disorder. It can sometimes present as biting or rubbing the skin, but the latter is typically only seen in someone who has begun the process of refocusing the habit (which is the only direct treatment). Like other mental disorders, this behavior is not occasional or truly conscious. The greatest danger to people with it is infection from the wounds inflicted, though if an individual's default place is particularly vulnerable, exsanguination (bleeding to death) is possible.

**Submitting Info:**  
**Stacked with:** Hogwarts (Term 11); MC4A  
**Individual Challenges:** Misunderstood; More than England; Black Ribbon (Y); Black Ribbon Redux; Small Fry; Gryffindor MC; Ravenclaw MC; Sett to Destroy; Lion's Moon & Shadow Bribery (Y); Fall Leaves; Unaccompanied Minors; Shipmas; Tissue Warning; Golden Times; Interesting Times; Location, Location, Location; Advice from the Mug; Ethnic & Present; Tiny Terror (Y); Neurodivergent; Quiet Time; Rian-Russo Inversion; Flags & Ribbons; Letter of the Day; Short Jog; Yellow Ribbon (Y); Yellow Ribbon Redux  
**House:** Hufflepuff  
**Assignment No.:** Term 11 – Assignment 06  
**Subject (Task No.):** Men's History (Task #4: Write about someone dealing with a mental illness/disorder. Must be on Wikipedia's list of mental disorders.)  
**Other Hogwarts Challenges:** Insane Prompt Challenge [260] ("It made me think of you."); 365 [87] (Float); Galleon Club (Blood)  
**Space Address (Prompt): **Fa Bingo [1B] (School)**  
Representation(s):** Lunar Lions QPR; Autistic Luna Lovegood; Autistic Harry Potter  
**Bonus Challenges: **Sitting Hummingbird; Bad Beans; Second Verse (Hot Apple; Casper's House; Lyre Liar; Grease Monkey; Lovely Coconuts; Car in a Tutu; Unwanted Advice; Spinning Plates; Zucchini Bread; Nontraditional; Found Family; Persistence Still; Not a Lamp); Chorus (In the Trench; Abandoned Ship; Unicorn; Tomorrow's Shade; Mouth of Babes; Peddling Pots; Machismo; Wabi Sabi; Pocky Pockets; Odd Feathers)  
**Tertiary Bonus Challenges:** T3 (Thimble); SN (Rail; Spare); FR (Liberation); O3 (Orator; Oath); RoIL (Amelioration)  
**Word Count:** 2430

(^^)  
**To Exist**  
(^^)

The boy rocked slightly on his bed. It wasn't a bed like the rest of his family's. Their beds had wooden parts and an underneath. His bed was just a cot mattress that had been shoved into the space along the back wall of the cupboard under the stairs. He had to be careful when he rocked. If he wasn't careful, he would knock his head against the walls or the shelf that held the cleaning chemicals.

Either wasn't good for him. If he knocked his head against the walls, it would make a noise that would remind his aunt and uncle that he existed. Reminding his aunt and uncle that he existed would mean a longer punishment than he had already earned. It would be even worse if he did it while someone was visiting, like Aunt Petunia's bridge club. Knocking against the shelf had a similar consequence but with smell instead of sound because the shelf would fall over, and the bottles would fall off. Every time that happened, the lids popped open, spilling the contents and drawing Aunt Petunia's attention. The chemicals also made the boy's head feel all fuzzy and his stomach queasy.

It was just so dark in his cupboard. Sometimes, if the boy didn't rock, it felt like he didn't even exist, just like his aunt and uncle liked to pretend. It felt like the entire world was just existing around him while he did nothing but listen to the pounding of his heart and the blood rushing in his ears. It felt like he could scream, and no one would even hear him.

As he rocked, the boy held both his ankles near where they crossed each other. His fingers, thin and delicate as they were, flexed with the motion of his body. They didn't dig in so much as repeatedly dragged over the knob of the joint. His nails had been chewed away, leaving papery shreds that actually felt nice against his skin. The skin of the area felt soft as he scratched at it. Maybe it just felt nice to feel something, even if it was starting to hurt as the hours continued to grow.

Alone in the dark as he was, the boy just rocked and scratched, letting the pain prove that he really did exist.

(^^)

School was hard.

Honestly, it was probably harder than it should have been, especially with Aunt Petunia's edict to not shame her Dudders. He couldn't help it if Dudley had all the intelligence of a rock. He especially couldn't help that Dudley still threw things when he didn't get his way. It wasn't like the boy had any control over his cousin.

It was also harder to avoid drawing attention from the adults. For the first few months, it seemed like all of them wanted to talk to him. They wanted to know about the Dursleys, and his cupboard, and why his lunchbox never had much in it. They wanted to know about other things, too. They did tests, lots and lots of tests. Some of them were fun like the puzzles test where he had to make patterns using the blocks. Others were less fun like the one with the flashing light. That one made his head hurt.

But he would do their tests a thousand times and then a thousand more, all without a complaint, because going to school meant finding out that he had a _name_. He wasn't _the boy_ or _the whelp_ or _the freak_. He had a real name, just like a real person who really existed. He didn't fit in at the Dursleys because he wasn't a Dursley. He was a Potter.

He was Harry Potter, and he existed.

But school was still hard, especially when he came back from winter break and suddenly, all that attention was just gone. Most of the adults who had been so interested in him didn't seem to remember he existed. Their gazes would slide over him in the same way that water would roll off a duck's back. The adults who still saw him would only do so if their attention was drawn directly to him in some way and only for as long as it took for whatever was drawing their attention to be resolved.

Because Aunt Petunia would rap his knuckles every time she caught him biting his nails, Harry would instead hold his wrists. The fact that his clothes used to be Dudley's helped hide how the stubs of his nails left red lines as they scratched over the same skin repeatedly. Sometimes it would hurt, but the pain was nice. It felt like a rock when his head felt like a balloon; it gave him something to tie his string to when he was going to float away into nothingness.

Watching from the sidelines as Mrs. Fairweather passed out afternoon snacks and forgot all about him again, Harry twisted his hands and scratched at his wrists, letting the pain remind him that he did really exist.

(^^)

Magic was amazing.

_Flying_ was amazing.

There was always something that needed to be done, though, and despite his best efforts, it seemed like only Harry could do those things. People wanted to shake his hand for things that he couldn't even remember. Or they were asking to see his scar. Or they were telling him how they had read all about him in some book. Once in his third year, a first-year asked him to autograph a book supposedly based on his childhood adventures and asked a dozen questions about his extensive training with Shaolin monks. Harry had barely managed to stutter out a response, much to Ron's amusement and Hermione's put-upon sighs.

Harry always did what needed to be done, just like he always did his chores at the Dursleys. Over time, he figured out what everyone expected from the great Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived. It became a mask, just as much as the stories that the Dursleys told the rest of the neighborhood. It was a familiar feeling even if it did chafe as much to be the wizarding world's hero as it did to be the Privet Drive delinquent.

After so many years of not being seen at all unless he was in trouble, the attention shining down on him made him feel like he was burning like Dudley's skin in summer. No amount of brown skin could save him from that, however, and just like back in Little Whinging, it only made him stand out more. He didn't speak Hindi like the Patils did or Rromani like Lavender Brown. He barely spoke English. Well, and Parseltongue, but Harry didn't think that counted for anything good since it was the mark of a dark wizard. Everything the Dursleys ever said about Harry might even be true if Dumbledore was wrong about Voldemort passing the ability to him the night he tried to kill him.

Sometimes, the only thing that Harry could do was take deep breaths to keep from breaking down into tears. On those occasions, he would wrap his arms around his middle. His fingers would slip beneath the hem of his still-too-large shirt. His nails were still only stubs, because he regularly chewed them despite years of bruised knuckles and lips burned by various chemicals. They still felt good as they scratched along his sides. The ache that resulted from the action helped quell the urge to cry or throw a tantrum worthy of Dudley.

Surrounded by people, Harry would shake and scratch, letting the pain remind him that he did exist as something more than a shadow cast by a myth.

(^^)

Watching Cedric die… It was horrible.

Seeing his parents for the first time outside of a photograph was somehow even worse.

Yet there was something truly painful about how quick everyone dispersed after it was all over and Fudge had made his stance clear. Even Remus and Sirius didn't hesitate to leave; Mrs. Weasley didn't stay either. Harry knew none of them were his parents or guardians, and therefore they weren't obligated to stay at all. He knew that intimately. It still hurt to see it play out.

He felt like one of Snape's cauldrons after detention. Dutifully, he accepted his dose of Dreamless Sleep from Madam Pomfrey. It did nothing to reduce the scrubbed-raw emptiness inside him.

In his sleep, he picked at the tender scab that covered the cut Wormtail had given him. Apparently, wounds caused by dark magic were tricky to heal. His habit of biting his nails down to the quick kept him from breaking more than a few spots. The drops of blood bloomed like scarlet flowers on the pristine white sheets, all unseen by their sleeping occupant. The cleaning charm imbued in them removed the silent blossoms before Madam Pomfrey did her rounds in the morning.

The pain still echoed through Harry's unconscious mind, screaming its existence to a deaf audience.

(^^)

"I got this for you in Hogsmeade," Luna said as she pushed a tiny drawstring bag at his chest. It felt soft and velvety when his hands automatically came up to catch it. Luna tried to grin at him and ended up showing too much teeth for him to not squirm at the sight. "It made me think of you."

"Thank you," Harry said, still a bit in shock at receiving a gift. He had only known the blonde for less than a month and had only spoken to her twice. Still, with everyone seemingly convinced that he was a nutter, having a friendly face around probably wouldn't be a horrible thing. "I'm sure I'll love it."

"You should open it before you say things like that," Luna replied. She looked more confused at his statement than reprimanding like her words would suggest. Then again, Harry was horrible at judging people's tones and knew it. "What if you don't like it? I wouldn't know not to get you something different next time. Then you'd end up with a bunch of things that you hated but I thought you loved."

"Why would you be buying me things?"

"Because they made me think about you, of course. Didn't I say? I don't always remember what I've said and what I'm planning to say, so that can happen, you know." Luna tilted her head to one side like she was listening to something. After a moment, she hummed a single note before continuing. "People don't buy you things, just because they want to?"

"Of course not," Harry said. He had seen people do it for Dudley, and occasionally, Lavender and Parvati would do it, too. But no one had ever wanted to do it with him. Not that it was their fault, really, because even if Hermione and Ron had wanted to, they didn't have the means to do it. Luna hummed again.

"Well, I just did," she said in a tone that was surprisingly grounded considering how she had sounded so floaty in their last two conversations, "and before you get upset, I did it without expecting anything in return. It wouldn't be fair to expect a gift in return when I didn't even know that I would be getting you one until I saw this."

Luna laid one of her hands over the top of his. With gentle pressure, she forced his fingers to stop the nervous picking that they had started. The sensitive scratches he had been rubbing at declared in his own handwriting that he must not tell lies. Not even a full month of writing lines for Umbridge and Harry was certain that he would have the words as a scar, possibly for the rest of his life.

Not that anyone cared as long as he stopped losing his temper and kept his head down.

The rage boiled in his chest, threatening to spill out again. He wanted to gnash his teeth like Lupin's wolf form, to claw his way free of the situation. He wanted to scream because of how stupid and blind everyone was. He wanted to cry because there was nothing that he could do to stop, well, _anything_, but everyone just kept expecting him to be this omnipotent figure that wanted to take on the government regime right along with Voldemort.

He just hadn't even sat for his O.W.L.s yet.

Luna squeezed his hand, not saying a word.

"Why?" he croaked, barely able to speak through the clog in his throat.

"It made me think of you," Luna repeated simply. Her smile turned more natural and only lifted one side of her mouth. Honestly, it looked less like something she was mimicking a dragon with an earache. When she continued speaking, her tone was soft but fell oddly flat in spots like it was too distracted with itself to keep any emotion in it. That, too, felt more natural for the Ravenclaw. "You're prone to nargles, you know. They get in your head and then into your hands. Then your fingers become your enemy just as much as your thoughts. There's no real cure for nargles, not the real kind. All you can really do is give your fingers something else to do, besides be your enemy, that is. It's better for all your parts to be on the same side, of course, but that can't always be true. This should help, just the same."

With one last squeeze of his hand, she pulled her hand away.

His fingers trembled as he worked the drawstring open enough to let him dump the bag's contents out. The stone beads clicked dully against each other. There were five irregularly shaped chunks of amethyst carved deeply with a meandering swirling pattern. In between each of these disks were a dark blue round, a dark purple cube, a larger round of black lavarock, and then another cube followed by the dark blue round. Tiny disks made of water-clear quartz had been slipped between each bead to act as a buffer.

It was beautiful.

Even better, it felt wonderful between his fingers, no matter how many times he went around the bracelet. Harry felt something in him settling without an ache of some sort accompanying it. He was at peace in the way that no amount of Trelawney's funky teas and equally funky incense could manage. Opening his eyes, Harry found Luna watching him in the same intensely focused way she had used when declaring her support.

And for the first time, he didn't feel any doubt about whether he existed.


End file.
